Book of Destruction

by P Sachidanandan

  ‘These are all certainly welcome signs, reflecting the true nature of the philosophy of destruction. This also adheres to the rules and methodology so dear to thuggee. But at one point we find it deviating from our principles, and that is in abandoning the esoteric nature of it. The perpetrators of destruction these days are coming out and making proclamations, claiming glory. They do not perform the act mandatory to us thugs, namely burying the dead bodies and erasing the evidence from the prying eyes of the public. Devi Bhavani also seems to have become lax about taking the responsibility upon herself, of disposing of the bodies in case of contingencies, like she used to.

  ‘On one hand, the modern thugs accept the purity of destruction. On the other, they deviate from the binding customs and rituals. Are they reforming thuggee, or polluting it with extraneous practices? Or, to take another view, does all this mean that mankind has finally begun to see clearly and has accepted the fundamental and basic role destruction plays in life—to the extent that secrecy has become superfluous? Does it mean that even while holding high the ideology, a change is being wrought in the methodology? Is Devi Bhavani, having seen the ascent of mankind, and being satisfied with it, leaving the field altogether, denying herself the offerings of devotees, and allowing them to enjoy and revel in their act on their own? I am passing on all these questions to you to ponder over.’

  I sat frozen in my chair. This was a man who used to converse happily with plants and flowers, take part in all manner of mundane human activities positively and constructively, who could appreciate philosophy, art and literature—a simple Vaishnava Brahmin. Suddenly one day a shadow of suspicion falls over him. Four and a half decades pass. Then, breaking through the remaining shells of goodness, he emerges, shedding all pretences, to spread only horror and suspicion everywhere. He unveils himself and tells me that he was my failed murderer, without even a pretence of an apology. Assuming the guise of a samharamurty, he proclaims that lies, deception and destruction are the basic tenets and characteristics of mankind, even of the whole living world.

  The first question I forced upon myself was: how much of what he had written in that letter was true? Was that letter itself a deception, a game? Why would he play such a game from the other side of death where he was unable to enjoy the results? Was this man who died today, the same old Seshadri at all? If not, who was he? A psychopath, a madman? Questions washed over me, one after the other, and the aftertaste they left was fear. Fear itself seemed to assume a tangible character, filling the room and crowding around my body from all sides.

  I tried to bring his face back to my mind, the face of that man, the one revealed to me by the attendant from under the sheet and the one who had talked to me the previous day from the stretcher. Both had been in a prone position. The face of a prone man is different when he is standing. And a man’s face when dead is very different from when he is alive. I could not conjure an image of him alive and standing. My memory failed me. Seshadri was now a faceless man, or rather one with a dubious, intangible face. That did nothing to ease my discomfiture.

  I did a full swivel on my revolving chair. I got up and switched on all the lights in all the rooms. Turned all the fans on. This time yesterday, why, till even noon today, he was alive. With a roomal in his pocket perhaps, with all his confidence-earning tools of literature, politics, history and whatnot at hand. For a moment I thought of going back to the hospital to confirm he was really dead. To make sure the body that came out from the theatre was the same as the one I had seen the previous day. But how was I to make sure whether the dead man was the real Seshadri? Besides this letter, there was no other proof of Seshadri’s ever having been a thug. Who was the one that died, who was the one admitted into the hospital and who was the one who wrote the letter? If I leave behind all these and many other questions, everything boils down to a simple question: do thugs, does thuggee, exist today? I paced the length of the room several times, and every time I came back to the starting point and the letter lying on my table, I found myself edging closer to the belief that the things written on those pages were indeed true. The horrible reality came closer and closer as through a camera zooming in. Since the person with whom I was sharing the secret was dead, it was now wholly with me, on my side.

  I made a cup of strong black coffee and drank it in a hurry. I made another. If only I had visited him yesterday, I thought. He would have shared some of his old memories with me and let me off. What he had written in the letter were not things that could be said face-to-face. Or, who knows, he might still have written the note, with instructions to hand it over to me only in the event of his death. It seemed it was imperative for him to let it all out. Imperative, as all his actions had been to him. He was carrying a centuries-old load on his shoulders. Even if he could carry it beyond his death, it was not possible for him to ferry all the doubts and scruples he had acquired. I was by that time convinced of the truth of every single word he had inked on the paper. Yes, there are thugs, and thuggee still exists.

  I set out on a mission to collect information about thugs and thuggee. Books about thuggee in the libraries, the nineteenth-century files, case histories and records of trials in the archives, I gathered everything I could lay my hands on. I learnt to my horror that much of what Seshadri had said in his note was factually correct. According to some accounts, this group of people who had raised duping and killing their fellow beings to a level of faith and ritual had originated in central India. But in their empire-building days, the British discovered that the scourge had spread to the whole subcontinent and that some of the unseated rulers were aiding and abetting the thugs and the Pindaris, the more open plunderers, for their own sustenance. The campaign started by the British to suppress thuggee, which they considered essential to gain the confidence of the people unhappy with their corrupt erstwhile rulers, provided most of the material on the subject. Though the critics of orientalism had many reservations on the subject, no one could deny the existence of thuggee and the ritualistic character of the practice.

  The trials of captured thugs revealed that thugs were organized into a large number of gangs or bands, each of whom had its own chief known as mukhia or sardar, intelligence gatherers and specialized operators, like stranglers, gravediggers, etc. The thugs claimed that they had a special ability by which they could recognize each other, whatever their region, language, caste or religion. There had never been any power struggle among the thugs themselves. Their intelligence work was so efficient that it inspired Sleeman to start his own intelligence network, or rather a counter-intelligence agency, to trap the thugs. It was this agency that later grew into the intelligence department of the British government. It is believed that when the Americans established their Central Intelligence Agency after the Second World War they took inspiration from this agency. So, it would appear that the modern intelligence world originated from the necessity to eliminate these killer gangs.

  It was unimaginable for a cult spread out on such a vast scale geographically to have preserved the same set of rules, customs and practices, but that, it seemed, was a fact. Though they remained members of a cult, most of them, especially the gang leaders, were not full-time thugs. They functioned as patels of villages, sahukars, traders, priests of temples, clerks, landlords and ordinary householders when they were not on an operation. The day after the murder and looting, they would be back in their offices, shops, temples and homes. Some landlords, nobles and even kings who knew of the thugs operating in their domain protected them and in return received a share of the loot. So, thuggee went unchecked, and flourished without hindrance.

  Colonel Sleeman, the officer responsible for the suppression of thuggee under the British administration, says that at the cantonment where he was stationed, the leader of the thugs of that district, Hari Singh, had moved about as a respectable merchant and he himself had had many dealings with him. He would obtain passes from Sleeman’s office to bring clothes from Bombay to trade; these passes were then used by Ha
ri Singh to smuggle the loot he obtained by waylaying merchants and to sell them openly in the cantonment. Sleeman says he would never have known this had he not confessed, which he seemed to have done as a good joke. Bodies of several victims of this man and his gang lay buried within a few hundred yards from the main guard post of the cantonment as became apparent when Singh pointed out the graves in the coolest manner after his arrest.

  I discovered that Seshadri was also right when he said that the cult of thuggee welded together Hindus and Muslims, and numerous castes within them, into a close brotherhood. Looting and the acquisition of wealth were the objectives behind thuggee, but the faith always came first. Hindus and Muslims united as brothers in it and there was no bad blood between them when it came to thuggee. Thugs believed that their profession had the sanction of the gods. The pleasures on this earth were small; the promise of everlasting pleasure in Indra’s kingdom for the Hindus and of the houris in the kingdom of Allah for the Muslims beckoned them. All this could be achieved only by following the path of thuggee as it was believed to be the glorious profession bestowed upon a few select men by Devi Bhavani and the ever-merciful Allah. To refuse the opportunity extended to man to move along this glorious path was nothing but blasphemy. The model of brotherhood that Allah has described was realized among the thugs. It was only among them that true belief and true brotherhood came together. Go where you will, and you will find homes open to you and a thug ordained by Allah to greet you, whatever be the language and custom of the place, the guru advised the novice at the time of inducting him into the faith. Be kind as you will to those around you, be affectionate to your friends, pity the poor, give alms to the needy, but always remember that you are a thug from now onward and have sworn relentless destruction on all those whom Allah may throw in your way, he cautioned.

  Spies deployed by gangs of thugs passed on the information of merchants travelling with their merchandise. The chief with his gang then set out in the guise of merchants or government soldiers and joined them along the way. They earned the confidence of the merchants by discussing common concerns, sharing food and, ironically, sometimes even warning them against thugs in the area. They set up camp together in the forest and at night plied the victims with food and music. Meanwhile, the gravediggers of the gang, known as lughis, would get busy digging graves. Behind every person in the convoy including men, women, children, servants and cart drivers, a strangler would stand ready with his roomal. When the reception reached its peak with song, drama and music, the leader of the gang would suddenly utter a code phrase called jhirni such as Hukka bhar lao, Tambaku kha lo or Pani pilao. The stranglers, called bhurtotes, immediately sprang into action at lightning speed and threw their roomals around the necks of their victims. The struggle would last only a few seconds. Once the victims became still, their clothes were removed and the naked bodies pulled into the waiting graves. Such graphic descriptions furnished by the thugs during their trial and interrogation betrayed the thrill and sense of fulfilment they derived from the process. It was not easy for me to go through some of these narratives.

  A new entrant was initiated into the profession through an elaborate set of rituals. He was bathed and dressed in new clothes that had never been bleached and then led by hand by the guru into a room where the leaders of various bands would be seated on a clean white sheet. The initiator then asked the elders if they were content to receive him as a thug. If they answered yes, then the leaders accompanied the novice out of the room into the open where the guru raised his hands and beseeched Devi Bhavani to grant a good omen. If an omen in the form of a bird’s cry was received he was taken back to the room and a pickaxe and a white handkerchief were placed in his right hand. He raised them high in the air and took an oath invoking the goddess to whose service he was devoting himself. The same oath would then be repeated in the name of Allah and the Qur’an. A small hole would be made in the centre of the white cloth laid out in the room and the pickaxe planted in it with its handle pointing down. Pieces of gur would be placed around it and water sprinkled, accompanied by the chanting of prayers to the Devi and Allah, seeking their blessing and protection. The gur would then be distributed to everyone as a sacrament. All those who ate the gur were thus bound irrevocably to the profession.

  At this point in the description I was struck by a memory of the Seshadri of forty-five years ago. He had refused the dormitory accommodation offered by the company and had built himself a small hut behind the company’s resident director’s bungalow. I had visited him there once. I remember noticing a prominently positioned, fresh, unsoiled pickaxe placed neatly over a white piece of cloth. Respect given to a mali’s tool of trade, I remember thinking. But when I also saw a two-inch model of the tool placed over the makeshift table he had created out of packing cases, I asked him about it. I can’t remember now what his answer had been.

  I read on about the pickaxe. The pickaxe had not been part of the sacred symbols of the profession in the early days of thuggee, accounts say. Originally, the kerchief was the only holy instrument of thuggee and the act of thuggee was then limited to strangling the victim and plundering his possessions. Disposing of the bodies and erasing the evidence were the responsibility of the Devi, on whose instructions the thugs carried out the work of destruction. Once, some thugs became curious about how the Devi disposed of the bodies, and hid themselves behind some bushes after the killing to watch her in action. Foolish thugs, who thought they could elude the eye of the goddess! She appeared before them in a terrible form and upbraided them for their want of faith. She cursed them that thenceforth they would not be able to rely on her to protect them. ‘I will not remove the bodies of those whom you destroy; you must make your own arrangements for their concealment,’ she said. ‘It will not always be effectual and will at times lead to your detection by earthly powers and in this will lie your punishment,’ she added. She, however, agreed to grant them the retention of their cunningness and intelligence and agreed to assist them with omens for their guidance. Thus came into being the custom of killing only after the graves were ready. They also had to make gashes in the abdomen of the corpses before burial to prevent bloating that could unsettle the loose soil over the grave. Like the stranglers, thus came into being a new speciality, the gravediggers, and the pickaxe, like the original roomal, became a sacred object to be worshipped.

  There were a number of people in those days who were not thugs, but were aiding and abetting thuggee, and among these abettors were sanyasis, fakirs and priests. The thugs thus had access to the retreats, ashrams and temples, often surrounded by forests, close to the villages, which provided convenient grounds for disposal of the dead bodies.

  But, one might ask, why strangling and why no other method for killing? One story goes that Kali, who had been created by Siva expressly for killing the demon Raktabija, found herself faced with a problem when trying to destroy him. Raktabija, as his name suggests, had a boon from Siva that every drop of his blood that hit the ground would give birth to a new Raktabija. So Kali unleashed an army of soldiers armed with nothing but handkerchiefs who strangled the demons without spilling blood. The demons were destroyed and the army of her soldiers, in the course of time, became thugs. According to Hindu belief, the concept of the universe consists of two coexisting balancing forces, those of creation and destruction. Hindus believe that there is a constant struggle between the two. The creative power peopled the earth so fast that the destroyers had to struggle to keep pace with them and for this purpose was commissioned Devi Bhavani, or Kali, whatever you choose to call her. She sent forth into the world a number of her votaries endowed with superior intelligence and cunning, bidding them to carry out relentless destruction among humans. I was struck by the deliberate corruption and distortion of established myths and concepts. In Hindu mythology, the goddess known as Kali or Bhavani was employed to destroy a demon who had spread wild destruction among men. How and why was such a goddess made into a destroyer par excellence? I suppose
the only explanation is that even people engaged in evil have to find divine sanction for their work in order to silence their conscience. And mythology, an ever-malleable medium, is at the service of every ingenious mind, however vile.

  Fear pulled a brake on my hunt for information. What I had found was more than enough to chill my spine. The accounts were beyond gruesome; they were heinous. Thugs in custody made these depraved revelations with no qualms or remorse. They, in fact, accused the courts of incomprehension—‘Why don’t you understand?’ It became difficult for me to go on reading. At the same time I had been told that a much more vile document existed and I had been commissioned by the long-gone Seshadri to read it—The Book of Destruction. Where I would find it, he had not told me. Was it an actual document, or just a metaphor? I remembered that Seshadri, a teacher of literature, was in the habit of talking in similes and metaphors.

  Fear had become the very air around me. Sitting in a bus, in a cinema hall, in a busy assembly or while attending a function, I found myself frequently looking over my shoulder. Is he there somewhere? In whose guise or wearing what apparel is he coming this time—a leader, a worker, an officer, a philosopher, a historian or a merchant?

  Seshadri had described me as a fiction writer; I was a liar and deceiver according to him, though of a different kind. In one sense perhaps it was true. We writers disguise fiction as imagination and present it to our readers, who do not like lies. Writers argue that a totally realistic work would be like a dry newspaper report or documentary film. We labour hard to prove that there are several ways to present the truth and that imagination and fantasy are but some of them. That doesn’t however make the non-existent exist. Why am I justifying myself, making all these apologies? Am I scared of the accusations of a dead thug? But apologies are of no avail to a thug. For he wraps his roomal around my neck not because of any grievance against me. He has no ill feeling or emotion towards his victims. He does not even see their faces. All he sees is the neck. What carries him is his devotion to and faith in his goddess. He kills merely because his goddess has thrown you before him. And why is the goddess throwing you in his way? Because destruction, just like creation, is in the realm of the gods. Closing her eyes, she picks out some from her creation and makes them thugs. With eyes closed, she again plucks some others as victims!